Parkinson’s disease was described in 1817 by Dr James Parkinson, who published an essay reporting six cases of ‘paralysis agitans’ (the disorder that was later renamed after Parkinson). He described the characteristic resting tremor, abnormal posture and gait, paralysis and diminished muscle strength, and the…

A 2008 paper by Thoeringer et. al., published in the Journal of Neural Transmission [1] described a study of 238 adult Caucasian patients recruited from an Anxiety Disorders Outpatient Clinic in Europe presenting various anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder….

Depressive and neurotic behaviours have many potential triggers and contributory factors, but few associated genetic variants have been found, most likely due to the large numbers of subjects needed: Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) require large sample sizes to have sufficient…

23andMe currently reports over 600,000 SNPs in the genome explorer, which are analyzed by their custom 2014 v4 chip. The process used is genotyping, rather than sequencing. The former is cheaper and quicker, and targets specific parts of the genome that are…